One of the ways that we reach our target audience is through the IPC sessions. Each session involves a group of adults or youth but no more than 25 people per group. The groups are led by peer educators (youth) or community health workers (adults). By having a small group of people, the leaders of the group can control the flow of the meeting and assure that each person participates. The objective of the IPCs is to help participants change risky behaviors.
Most of our partner organizations use IPC sessions as one of their main activities for our behavior change project. On this trip, I went with one of our RPOs to do supervision of session.
We arrived towards the end of the IPC with about 14 women and men sitting in a circle and many kids running around, being curious. This health issue for this community was safe water. The people we visited are part of the population that we classify as "most vulnerable." They receive government assistance, including free health insurance, clothing, and food. As a vulnerable population, getting people to change their behavior is a huge and difficult task. For this community, there was no water source near by so they have to travel down the hill (by hill I mean mountain) to get water from the river. They buy jerry cans of water for 20 francs a can which is about 3 cents. Each jerry can holds 20 liters of water.
The community health worker leading the session was talking about one of our products when we arrived: Sur'eau. Sur'eau is one of our 2 water purification products. During this IPC the group discussed the importance of having clean water and how Sur'eau can treat their river water. One bottle of Sur'eau costs 250 francs, about 40 cents. This one bottle treats 50 jerry cans of water or 1000 liters of water. One of the hardest parts of behavior change is convincing the population that changing their behavior is worth it. While we do sell health related products, the most important aspect of our work is improving people's lives. By getting them to change their behavior to improve their health and invest in it (using safe water, mosquito nets, doing family planning, and using condoms to protect against unwanted pregnancies, STIs, and HIV), they can increase their livelihood long after the donors pull out. Because the vulnerable populations receive things for free, they get into the mind set that they should always get handouts. Getting them to invest in healthy behaviors is difficult but once they get into the mindset and invest in their health and future, the process is sustainable and snowballs into healthier lives.
After the IPC focused on safe water, we attended a youth IPC led by peer educators for a group of about 20 boys and 1 girl all under age 24. This session was more interesting for me (partially because I was there the whole time and it was more dynamic). The session started with a game. We lined up in two lines and stood shoulder to shoulder. While the one line sang a song, the other line passed a potato behind their backs from one person to another. When the peer educator said "stop" everyone stopped and the singing line had to guess who had the potato. I don't think they guessed correctly the entire game.
Next we went inside and the peer educators introduced the topic- HIV/AIDS. They asked the group how they could tell if someone has HIV by physically looking at them. After they gave a bunch of responses (not quite sure what they said since it was in Kinyarwanda) the peer educators reminded them that just like in the game we played, you can't know if someone is infected just by looking at them.
They spoke some more and then pulled out condoms and a wooden penis for condom demonstrations. They passed out a brochure with instructions in Kinyarwanda. Instead of the peer educators just doing a demonstration, they asked the group if they knew the steps of correctly using a condom and went around the circle allowing them to explain and demonstrate. Once everyone figured out proper condom use they discussed reasons why people their age do/don't use condoms, if they carry them around with them on a regular basis, and other stigmas related to condom use.
Even though I could not understand most of what was being said, it was really great to attend these IPCs. It was good to see our peer educators and health workers in action, what challenges they face in the field, and the great work that they are doing on a daily basis.
